Daniel Andrews has apologised for failures in Victoria’s hotel quarantine program, blaming lack of time when the program was established in March for the errors and lack of oversight that led to Victoria’s second wave of Covid-19 cases.
The final report of the hotel quarantine inquiry, released on Monday, found the speed at which the program had to be set up meant proper risk assessments were not undertaken, paving the way for mistakes in infection control in hotels.
Andrews said he was sorry for the errors, and said work was under way to ensure they were not repeated.
“I want to apologise to the Victorian community for the very clear errors that were made in this program,” he said.
“I think that the way in which the program was established, … it had to be done quickly.
“That’s the nature of a global pandemic. There is no rule book as such.”
The final report of the inquiry, chaired by retired judge Jennifer Coate, amounted to more than 500 pages in two volumes.
The hotel quarantine program was announced after a national cabinet meeting on 27 March, and put in place within 36 hours.
The report took aim at the federal and Victorian governments for not having an up to date pandemic plan, including quarantine, in place before the Covid-19 outbreak, which meant public servants had to race to put one together from scratch.
“This was a most unsatisfactory situation from which to develop such a complex and high-risk program,” it said.
It found that ultimately no one made the decision to use private security in hotel quarantine. Coate referred to it as an orphan, “with no person or department claiming responsibility”.
“Ultimately, the evidence did not identify that any one person decided to engage private security in the program,” the report said.
Private security personnel were among those first infected from the outbreaks, including one guard who went on to work as a delivery rider while infectious.
The report found that the then-chief commissioner of police Graham Ashton expressed a preference to use private security, and that set off the subsequent chain of events.
It found there was no consideration on 27 March of the respective merits of using private security or police or Australian defence force personnel in the hotels.
Andrews said if he could go back in time, he would have made sure on 27 March that Victoria police were used instead of private security.
Coate found Andrews and the former health minister, Jenny Mikakos, had played no part in the decision to use private security, and while the police minister, Lisa Neville, was aware of the proposal, the report found she was not responsible. The jobs minister, Martin Pakula, “appears not to have been told” until after private security was engaged.
“Enforcement of quarantine was a crucial element of the program that the premier had committed Victoria to adopting, but neither he nor his ministers had any active role in, or oversight of, the decision about how that enforcement would be achieved.”
Coate said the public would probably be shocked there was no rationale given on the date for using private security, or approval by upper levels of government, including the ministry.
“The people of Victoria should understand, with clarity, how it was that such a decision to spend millions of dollars of public money came about,” the report said. “The people should be able to be satisfied that the action to proceed in this way was a considered one that addressed the benefits, risks and options available in arriving at such a decision.
“There was no evidence that any such considered process occurred, either on 27 March 2020 or in the days and weeks that followed, until the outbreaks occurred.”
The report did not blame security guards directly, noting most worked with honesty and goodwill.
“None of those workers went to work to get infected with Covid-19. However, systemic governmental failings led to problems.”
The report found the role of security guards was “ill-defined” and the insecure nature of work in the industry meant security guards were not the right workforce for hotel quarantine.
“A fully salaried, highly structured workforce with a strong industrial focus on workplace safety, such as Victoria police, would have been a more appropriate cohort, which would have minimised the risk of outbreaks occurring and made contact tracing an easier job in the wake of an outbreak,” the report said.
The outbreaks of Covid-19 in two quarantine hotels – the Rydges on Swanston (now known as the Park Hotel) and the Stamford Plaza – accounted for more than 20,000 cases of Covid-19 and more than 800 deaths.
The source of the outbreak from the Rydges was likely to be due to poor cleaning practices and poor personal protective equipment use by security guards, the report found. It mad no finding on how the outbreak in the Stamford occurred.
In the course of the inquiry, one minister and two senior public servants linked to the program quit.
Mikakos resigned from the ministry and parliament after Andrews said in his submission he viewed her as responsible for the program. The head of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Chris Eccles, resigned after it was revealed he had called Ashton at a crucial point on 27 March, which he did not recall in earlier evidence. The head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Kym Peake, also resigned before the final report was released to “pursue other opportunities”.
The final report makes 12 recommendations on top of the 69 made in the interim report, including updating the pandemic plan for Victoria, and examining the potential for mandatory testing for returned travellers in hotel quarantine.
The interim report, released in November, outlined proposed changes to managing hotel quarantine for returned travellers, much of which was adopted in the program that relaunched at the start of December.
Andrews said on Monday his government intended to adopt all the recommendations.
“There’ll be people missing from the Christmas dinner table on Friday and I am deeply sorry and saddened by that, but my commitment is to not only apologise, but … to also … make sure that we do everything we possibly can to learn these lessons and make sure that these sort of mistakes, these sorts of failings can never be repeated.”
